Community as Practice

Caitríona Reed

People often request private meditation instruction. They have schedule conflicts, or are shy about participating in a group, or perhaps simply feel they'll receive more complete instruction if we meet one on one. As a teacher I do my best to adapt to what people want, and I do meet with people individually when I can. However I always encourage the aspiring practitioner to come to a class, a retreat or to regular Sangha (community) meditation. There is something in the collective experience of community that they can't get from meeting with me alone. This is not to say that the experience and knowledge of the "teacher" is without value, but rather that our learning, our transformation, takes place best within the crucible of a collective, communal setting.

Our meditative experience, our path, the process of our unfolding are both an individual and a collective affair. To be healthy we need to have time alone but we also need to spend time with others. We have strong associations with the image of the solitary seeker in a cave. This, we think, is the true path to enlightenment, and community is just the babble of the market place. Certainly, some of our most deeply transformational experiences may come to us in solitude; but is it not also true that those experiences are consummated, strengthened and authenticated within our circle of friends, family, associates and the collective body of our society, within our community?

Near the entrance to the meditation hall at Manzanita Village, posted on the bulletin board, is a quotation from Shunryu Suzuki: "On retreats we sit together, walk together, eat together. Pretty soon everybody gets to see who you are. You might as well get to see it yourself" In other words, it's okay to be seen. People don't stop loving you. On the contrary, your willingness to be seen, to be authentic, vulnerable, real, lets them love you all the more. From there it may be possible for you to see, and so to love and accept, yourself as well as others. When we are willing to risk making mistakes __ to admit to them, learn from them, ask and accept forgiveness for them __ the heart, the body are softened, made human, tenderized. This happens in a healthy community setting rather than through the desire to manifest some sort of transcendental invulnerability to these things.

Why do we practice the Dharma? Why practice meditation or cultivate mindfulness? Are we seeking some sort of exotic experience? Or is it our wish to create an environment in which transformation can take place, an environment in which the very nature of experience is turned around, allowing us the option to not grasp, not suffer? If it is the latter, is it not through the recognition of our interconnectedness that transformation is possible?

Community is a process rather than a thing. When we take refuge in the Sangha as one of the three jewels; with the Buddha and the Dharma; we take refuge in the process of community and in our ability to participate in it. Through our willingness to be seen, we touch each other, our teachers and those who are yet to come.

Copyright (c) Caitríona Reed. Spring 1997